One day, we took a family trip to my grandmother’s house. Since there were more of us than could fit in the same car, and because of a few complications, we decided that my siblings would go first, getting a ride with the owner of the farm where we lived. My parents, my sister’s boyfriend, and I would go a few days later.
On the way back, we did the same thing, but this time my mother and I were the ones who stayed behind to leave with the farm owner.
Everything went well. My father and my siblings returned home and everything was fine. A friend of my sister’s came to visit her and stayed for a couple of days, but after she left, my mother felt that something was wrong. She called my sister to talk and, out of nowhere, said:
“I think you should put a mattress in my room. Your father sleeps in the bed with your brother, and you can sleep on the mattress, so you won’t be alone.”
The strange thing is that this had never been a problem before, but it seemed like something had worried my mother that day. My sister also seemed somewhat uneasy and agreed without any resistance.
That night, they arranged the beds. My father left the bedroom light on and turned off all the other lights. Then everyone went to sleep.
In the middle of the night, the light started bothering my father. He called my little brother, who was about ten or eleven years old at the time, and asked him to turn off the bedroom light and turn on the one in the living room. That way, there would still be some light, but it wouldn’t be shining directly into their eyes.
He got up without complaining and went to do what our father had asked.
We live in a simple place, in a typical Brazilian farmhouse. The layout is very different from houses in the United States. The living room was right next to the bedroom, so my brother only had to cross the doorway to get there. The light switch was at the far end of the room, right next to the door that led to my sister’s bedroom. There was no hallway or another room blocking the way.
Everything was fine until my father heard a scream.
He jumped out of bed. My sister woke up too, and the two of them went to see why my brother had screamed. They found him crying and mumbling that there was someone in my sister’s bedroom.
He couldn’t describe it properly or give many details. My brother cried like a baby and couldn’t stay alone for days.
Years later, while we were drinking a beer and talking, my brother finally revealed, in detail, what he had seen.
According to him, when he reached for the light switch, his eyes automatically went toward the door of that bedroom. But it wasn’t empty like it should have been.
Instead, standing there with its body inside the room and its head sticking out through the doorway, there was a boy.
He said the boy was extremely pale, with very light hair and skin, almost like an albino. His eyes were enormous and black, but they seemed almost like headlights because, despite being dark, they had a strange kind of glow that allowed him to see. His mouth was open too, not as if he were speaking, but forming an “O.”
And the strangest part was that the thing wasn’t looking at my brother. It was looking toward the bedroom my brother had just left, where my father and sister were sleeping.
My brother kept staring, completely paralyzed, unable to turn on the light or say anything, until the creature seemed to realize that it was being watched and finally looked at him.
It was so terrifying that he finally screamed, waking everyone up.
He babbled the story to my father, unable to give many details. Our father went into the room, walked through the entire house, turned on all the lights, and checked every room.
There was nothing there.
But my brother never forgot it.
And the strange thing is, I feel like something changed in him after that day. As if something inside him had broken and never healed.
He became more violent, more reckless. He was no longer the affectionate, slightly mischievous little kid we knew.
He was never the same again.
Maybe it’s just my perception, but I always think about it, and I can’t help wondering if that thing, whatever it was, did something to my brother, even if only indirectly.